


i hear you calling in the dead of night

by terreetsang



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Dain Ironfoot Appreciation Club, F/M, M/M, featuring fem!Dain Ironfoot, in which there is a lot of crying over the things they carried, my apologies to tim o'brien, subtitled: love fades away but things are forever, the aftermath of the battles of the five armies, the five stages of grief, who is amazing and wonderful and badass all hail
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-10-21
Packaged: 2018-02-08 08:16:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1933599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terreetsang/pseuds/terreetsang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which - an elf picks up a stone, and remembers a promise, and runs West.</p>
<p>In which - a small armory is handed to the not-yet-officially-crowned King Dain II Ironfoot of the Lonely Mountain by a rather shamefaced elf.</p>
<p>In which - a small hobbit is out searching for firewood, and finds.  Well, wood to be sure, but it is not meant to be burned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Runestone

The air echoes with screams. One of them might be hers. 

The battle is over now, the orcs have fled and are being chased back to the Misty Mountains by a coalition of elves and dwarves with their teeth bared and blood spattered on their beards, and the eagles rip the sky with the wings. She feels as thin as the wind. She knows where he would go, to Thorin Oakenshield, him and his brother armed with nothing but their rage and the brittle swords they claimed in Dale, and she knows Thorin Oakenshield was carried off the battlefield by the great bear, his body rent, and she knows that his nephews have not returned. 

She searches through the bodies of men and dwarves and elves and orcs and wargs and weeps for each death and her hands and armor grow dark with blood and she looks because she must find him she must—

When she does find him on the battlefield, he is dying. 

She had seen him dying before, all shudders and screams and the arch of his back and the fear in his eyes as he felt the shadow clawing for his soul—but it different this time. 

This time there is nothing she can do. 

His mouth opens like he wants to speak, to laugh—for a second, she thinks foolishly, for a second, she remembers, he could have anything down his trousers, and weeps—but his lips are a far brighter red than they should be and he chokes and the blood trickles down his chin his neck into his armor.

She kneels down next to him, and her hands hover over his face, his hair, his neck. She wants to touch, to touch and to comfort (she wants to scream and to cry and to beg because it is not fair none of this is fair)—

His breath is labored, harsh gasps. Every time he draws in air she can hear it tearing his lungs. 

“Hush,” she says, and remembers telling him to lie still. She remembers how he called her name then, and she will always be there she could no more leave him then she could cut out her own heart—

But he does not hear her, does not see her.

His body spasms once twice three times, and maybe he is calling for his mother or his father his brother (she’s sees his brother, still and his body torn, his golden hair dark with thick blood and she remembers how he had watched her, tense and coiled, and then how he had bowed to her his eyes overbright and wild as a storm and now there is nothing there but the vast emptiness of the sky) maybe he is calling for her—

But in truth he makes no noise, and all she hears is the roaring in her ears, battle cries and the slick edge of a sword. 

“Kíli,” she says, and does not recognize her own voice. The battle and the bodies have faded away, and all she knows is “Kíli,” she whispers, and he makes no response. 

She clutches onto him. Her hands are smeared with his blood, dwarf blood, and she wonders if this was some kind of joke, if this was the way her prayers were answered because she is an elf and he is a dwarf and they could not be and now—

“Kíli,” she begs, “You promised.”

He does not answer. He does not move. His body feels made of stone, like his kin, and there is nothing left in him, and she shakes him to wake him up wake up—she remembers his sly smile and his laugh as she had edged away and his playfulness and the spark in his eyes and he is just trying to scare her that is all—but his body hangs limply from her grip and his head falls back from her face, and his eyes stare blankly at the grey sky.

She shakes him again, furious—the fool, the fool, and a smooth stone rolls out from where it is tucked into his tunic. 

Come back to me, she thinks desperately, and her arms curl around him.

~~~~~

The Lady Dís had not moved in days.

Ever since the raven came, weeks ago, bringing with it the glorious news of the dragon’s demise and the great opening of the gates of Erebor, ever since then, she had been carved from granite, her face still and cold—she lead her people as her line had ever done, but she did not move. Her eyes did not curl into their soft smile, nor did they grow heavy with sorrow, aching blistering sorrow. They were empty.

Like the stones of the earth she breathed slowly, and like the caves of the earth she protected her people, the khazad, in her cold arms, but too like the earth she did not respond to their songs of thanks and calls for blessings, and she did not smile when a child was born and she did not weep, not when a mine collapsed and they could not drag all the miners out alive, not even in the deep privacy of her empty rooms. 

She just was—barely alive, since the news came from Erebor of the death of her brother and her sons in a battle far more terrible than any had predicted, and those who had remained behind avoided her cold eyes and felt guilt creep absurdly down their spines. The Lady Dís would not move. 

So it was when a young elf came running up the winding mountain paths. Elves were not unheard of in their parts—Ered Luin was far too close to the Grey Havens for elves to be unknown—but still, no elf had ever sought out the dwarven settlements that burrowed in the mountains, spilling out from the caves like ice-hot springs. 

But an elf did come, tall—although they were later to learn that she was in reality not a particularly large specimen—and fair with a head full of fire, and that had caught the eye first of the dwarves who guarded the walls of the cities.

That, and the words she spoke.

“Please,” she said, and that alone would have been quite enough to make the dwarves stop, thunderstruck, in their tracks. “Please, I must speak to—to the mother of—of Kíli.”

The sentries shifted, their weapons ready in their hands, and they darted quick glances at each other and then at the elf, the elf that stood there invoking the name of one of their dead princes. Her face was still under their gaze, still and drawn, and there was a bone-deep weariness that hung about her like a storm cloud. 

“Please,” she said. “I must.”

To their dying day, the seven dwarves of the Long Watch of the Mountain Guard could not say what had convinced them to let the elf in. Had the elves not turned a deaf ear to their own pleadings, starving in the open plains? What did they owe the elves, any elf? But still, they had relented—stripping the elf of her weapons, because they were not fools and one could never trust an elf. The elf stayed quiet as they worked, her shoulders tight and her head bowed as though pressed forward by a great hand. Elf faces did not age, yet one of the dwarves fancied he could see the passing of time flickering over her face, and centuries being slowly etched into her eyes, and he shuddered and checked her boots for hidden knives.

“The Lady Dís?” he asked, and turned to the watch’s captain, Nuru.

“Aye,” she said, tugging on her brown beard and casting a doubtful look towards the still elf. “If she permits it.”

They marched the elf through the stone streets—sending the Stone Watch to guard the wall in their place, and receiving some very incredulous looks in response—up to the gates in the mountainside and beneath the great axes. The elf tilted her head back, and watched the stars be replaced by a stone ceiling. The mountain hall split, lesser halls and stairs running deep below the surface of the ground—a pale imitation of Erebor, the elf thought, and felt a biting pain in her heart.

The dwarves led her down one hall, and then another, and another, until she was quite lost, and then they came to rest outside a wall set with a pale red stone, the designs intricate and geometric.

“The Lady Dís,” one of the dwarves muttered, and ran his fingers gently over his axe blade.

The captain paused. “Are you sure?” she asked.

The elf nodded tightly. 

Nuru turned, and pressed against the wall. It swung open slowly, revealing a small hall lined with great granite pillars and filled with silver light. It was populated by a dozen bickering dwarves—the respective heads of the guilds of the Chainmakers, Coppersmiths, Stonemasons, Miners, and Cartwrights, as well as several guards, the Second Minister of Finance, and the self-appointed Clanchief of the Firebeards in Ered Luin (not, of course, that the elf knew any of this)—and the Lady Dís.

The silence that fell over the room was rapid, as if their voices had been called away by the room. The elf thought, with a barely noticed shudder, of the last silence she recalled, on a battlefield.

The captain stepped forward and bowed. “My Lady,” she said, “The elf requests an audience.”

The silence grew even deeper. The Lady Dís stepped forward, slowly. She looked like her brother, except her braids were much thicker, and hung heavily over her brow and back. She looked like her sons, but she did not smile. She looked, the elf thought, and her thoughts were suddenly wild with grief, like stone. 

The Lady’s eyes were cold, and turned colder.

The elf bowed. “My Lady,” she said, and her voice almost broke, “I am Tauriel of the Woodland Realm. I—I knew your son.”

The air was ice.

“Your son,” Tauriel said. “Your son Kíli.” Her voice did not break on his name. She had been saying it, repeating it, whispering it to the stars. _Kíli kílikíli_ , and it was like his arms wrapped around her at night. 

“You knew my son,” the Lady Dís repeated, and if her eyes were stone it was nothing compared to her voice. The guild masters glanced at each other, and suddenly remembered projects under weigh that desperately needed their attention. The Clanchief muttered something about her husband, and the Second Minister of Finance did not bother with an excuse but just backed to the door. The guards flinched, and wished desperately that they were important enough to make up their own excuses. 

“You knew my son,” she repeated, and the elf’s face grew pale. 

“You knew my son. How well, I wonder? Did you think hime a curiosity—something to gawk at in the prisons? I heard about your Elf King, and his imprisonment of my sons and kin. How did you know my son? “

Tauriel flushed. “I—“ 

Dís’s eyes narrowed. “My son!” she spat “My sons! You saw him once, and think you knew him. Did you know his father’s name? Or the guild he chose? Or when he celebrated his birth-day?”

Dís glared at the elf, and stalked forward slightly. Nuru eyed the elf, and wondered miserably what the protocol was when one’s Lady and Princess attempted to kill an elf, and whether interfering at all was acceptable behavior. 

“You do not even know that! That, which any dwarfling not yet twenty could tell you,” the Lady snarled. “How could you say you knew him? Every year on my birth-day,” she said, and the air stirred a vicious wild grief, “He would make handpies and cover the kitchen with flour, and make his brother clean it with him, and kissed my cheek and left streaks of flour there as well.” 

Tauriel could not breathe. She felt as if she was drowning. The Lady Dís’s voice could smash the halls with its anger. 

“When he was a child he hated dragonflies—he thought they were real dragons. How could you know this? When he was born I held him in my arm, and he laughed and smiled—he did not cry, he laughed? Do you know how it felt to hold him in my arms?”

“Yes,” Tauriel said. “I held him when he died.”

The second the words were out of her mouth she wished she could take them back. Dís blanched, her eyes shattering. Tauriel’s knees shook, but she walked forward slightly. Dís raised her hand.

“Stay back, elf!” she snarled, but her words lacked the poison her brother’s had held. 

Tauriel stopped. She lowered her gaze to the floor. “I did not come here to fight you,” she said, and to her dismay her voice shook as well. “I came because—because I knew Kíli, and I lo—liked him, even though he was a prisoner and a dwarf and a curiosity, but I—I knew him, I did, and I knew the sound of his laugh and I knew his bravery and his loyalty and his kindness, and he was—he was special.”

Dís was silent and still. But, one of the guards thought, she was not the statue she had been in the days before. It was the silence before the earth shook, or maybe the silence after.

“I did not know him,” Tauriel said, and her shoulder’s hunched in misery, “Not the way you did, or your people. But I did know—he made you a promise, and I—I wanted to—“ 

She stopped, and shivered slightly. The words were tangling in her mouth, and she suddenly felt hemmed in, it was too tight, she could not breathe. She stared up at the rocks of the ceiling, silver mirrors hidden in the natural formations, and breathed. Then she reached into her tunic, near her heart, and brought out his stone. 

“He said,” she said, and found the words failing. She walked towards Dís, who was frozen, her eyes fixed upon the runestone. Tauriel knelt, and pressed the stone towards Dís. The Lady’s hands closed around it, her fingers white and bloodless. She captured Tauriel’s hand in her grip as well, and Tauriel could feel the faint tremors in her grip. 

“Tauriel,” the Lady said quietly, and her voice seem to be drawn out from deep within her heart. 

“Tauriel,” she said again, and her hands shook. Tauriel closed her eyes.

“My son,” she whispered. “My son.”

“Yes,” Tauriel said, and discovered she was shaking. “I know.”

Dís looked at her. “Yes,” she said, her voice heavy and barely above a whisper. Tauriel shut her eyes, and whispered a name in her head. She searched for his arms.

Her hands were caught again. They were strong, and warm. She shuddered.

“You do know,” Dís murmured, and lowered her head to brush against Tauriel’s, and felt her heart crack.


	2. The Knives

When Dáin II Ironfoot walks down the halls of Erebor, the halls which drip with scattered gold and the ashes of the bones of long dead dwarves, sometimes, sometimes, she hears them whispering—you are not welcome here. 

She is not the right king, she thinks, and drags her stone-weary body down the great halls with their cracked pillars and golden veins. She is not the right king. That honor is reserved for the bodies that lie interred in the depths of the Mountain, three of them, and all more welcomed by the stones of the mountain than she would ever be.

Durin’s blood, she thinks, half an oath and half a mournful sigh, for she is of Durin’s blood too, and it has called her here, and yet. She longs for the rolling heights and the grey stone halls of her own home, with iron mines zigzagging across the terrain, not this imposing craggy peak. She longs for the arms of her husband, Muhud, and the tumbling steps of her son running down halls she herself ran down. She longs for the hills she grew up in, with their iron veins, the hills she returned to drenched in her father’s blood.

You have done this before, she tells herself. You have returned to a throne not your own, fresh from battle and grief, and given a burden far too heavy to hold. You have done this younger, and with less experience, and you may do it again. But somehow, it is not the same, because—

Because she was never the heir of the Lonely Mountain, and these are not her ancestral halls, and everywhere she feels wrong, so wrong—she is rough iron forged in the dark sun, and Erebor is streams of gold and diamond bright eyes and bones and the pale winter sky, and this is not her home.

Yet here she is, the not-yet-crowned King Under the Mountain, for Thorin Oakenshield is dead and buried, and his heirs with him. Dáin sighs, and stands before their tombs. They are dark and imposing and unforgiving. Dead before their time, she thinks, and perhaps she can hear a child’s mocking laugh. She presses her hand to her eyes. Dead before their time, and here she stands. 

~~~~~

Spring returned with a vengeance to the Mountain, that first year after the battle. The snow melted and thundered down the cliff faces to join the River Running, and for the first time in the memory of the Men of the Lake the River ran clear, not choked with ash and smoke. Small shrubs and blades of grass began pushing their way out of the Desolation, and the thrushes began to sing again.

Inside the Mountain, the dwarves continued to rebuild. Caravans arrived, their wheels dark with mud, bearing emigrants from Ered Luin and the Iron Hills, and the Orocani Mountains far to the East, and even remnants of those who had fought in the War of Dwarves and Orcs, and chosen not to return to their ancestral halls. Families began to grow in Erebor once more; the laughter of children could be heard in the shallow halls.  
The deeper halls, however, remained uninhabited; Dáin did not wish for any damage the dragon may have done to come crashing down on the heads of the new settlers. The Lords Bofur and Bombur—all members of the Company of Thorin Oakenshield had received Lordships, even the hobbit who actually remained unaware of his new status, having left before someone could tell him—were put in charge of the excavations and explorations. Their backgrounds, in mining and architecture left them astonishingly well suited to the task.

The members of Thorin’s company were settling into Erebor; they were given places of honor, in the guilds and the Stonecouncil and the court. Dáin’s cousin Dwalin refused to head the army; he did not want to do anything but spend his time crashing ancient axes against the stone of the Mountain. Balin, for his part, mourned angrily; he remained an Advisor to the Line of Durin, but his face was bitter, and he—he hates the mountain, Dáin thought. It took too much.

The Stonecouncil was assembled, in the great hall made of black and green stone, with a massive white marble table. Balin—who had dragged Dwalin along with an air of grim determination—and Gloin—Oin had been invited to join, but had claimed to have too many responsibilities in the halls of healing—and five other dwarves had drawn themselves together for a meeting with messengers from king Thranduil of Mirkwood.

Dáin had thought herself prepared to treat with the elves. She was not expecting what they brought with them: weapons, dwarvish weapons, carefully polished and sharpened. Dwalin hissed through his teeth, and he brushed a finger along the edge of one of the axes. A great leather bag was placed in front of Dáin, and she carefully turned it out and watched as a glittering tangle of knives careened onto the tabletop.

They had polished until they gleamed, their blades throwing rainbows under the fractured light beneath the Mountain. The edges were sharp, so sharp, and the handles had been carefully buffed as well. They were piled in front of Dáin, so many she has lost count, each one lovingly drawn into fullest glory by careful fingers. 

She picked one up. She could see her face, dark and fierce, with a new raw scar running down one cheek, staring back at her. There was a loud cough from near her, and she placed it down, feeling a familiar jolt of irritation and, even more familiarly, guilt.

“Yes, cousin?” she said, and turned towards Balin. He glared at her, an expression shockingly out of place on his face—he had not forgiven her. He had not forgiven her for so many things. 

Balin cleared his throat, and his fingers touched one of the knives briefly. There were other weapons on the table, of course: a bow and an empty quiver, several swords, axes and maces and hammers and, surprisingly, a slingshot. But the knives drew the attention of everyone in the room—so many, and with their blades bared, they looked as though they thirsted for blood. 

Balin did not say anything, just stared at the blades. Dáin felt cold trickle snake down her back, fear and guilt and shame that rose from the dark recesses of her mind. The silence hung over the great marble table, thick and porous. 

One of the elves who had brought back the weapons shuffled his feet. Normally, it gave Dáin a petty flare of amusement to watch elves act uncomfortable, or irritated, or to realize that their plans to lay siege to a mountain guarded by thirteen dwarves and a hobbit was about to get much messier, or to have bad hair days, or to be anything less than irritatingly ethereal and perfect and self-absorbed; but today Dáin was tired, and felt the Mountain cutting deep into her forehead where she wore the Raven Crown, and how no desire to watch elves hover awkwardly around the weapons they robbed from Thorin’s Company, hemming and hawing and generally making nuisances of themselves.

“Thank you,” she said, rising stiffly; her iron leg had not been polished in several days, and rust was begin to creep around the edges. The elves exchanged swift looks, and stirred slightly. One of them moved forward—a female, Dáin thought, although elves were notoriously tricky to read.

“Mu king asked us,” she began, and faltered to a stop. “I mean to say, we were bid to return these weapons with our king’s, um….”

It was like watching a dwarfling attempt to chisel crystal out of a mine shaft without shattering the faces. 

The elf petered out, her pointy face reddening slightly, before gathering her courage again. “He wished,” she said, “for us to pass on his sincere regrets over the, uh, incident in which we acquired these weapons“—here Gloin choked on air, and would have said something if old Zehyesh, a Stonefoot general with one onyx eye, had not kicked him hard under the table—“and that he hopes that the relationships between the Mountain and the Greenwood will thrive once more.”

The elf hesitated. She seemed to have come to the end of her assigned speech, but her long fingers twisted together nervously. She looked at the dwarves, and her fingers stilled.

“I know my king may have said this,” she said, and her voice was deep with the turn of the years, “but you all should know he is very sorry for your loss.” Her eyes lingered on Dáin, and then flickered to Dwalin and Balin and Gloin. 

“Apologies change nothing,” Balin said, and his voice was old and bitter.

Dáin did not yet wear the crown, but she imagined she could feel the heavy edges cutting into her temples, squeezing her brains. “Aye,” she agreed, with rust on her tongue, “We must look to the future now.”

She paused. “We will continue the meets tomorrow, I think. You have given us much to discuss.” The elf nodded silently, her cheeks slightly pink. She turned impossibly, elegantly; and then the Mirkwood party glided from the room. 

“Elves,” someone muttered.

“Peace,” Dáin said wearily, “They are our allies.”

“They kept our weapons,” Dwalin said, his voice dark and dangerous. One of his tattooed fingers trailed lovingly down the edge of his axe. “Months, they kept them.”

“My father’s axes,” Gloin echoed. His red beard bristled.

There was a long silence. The light gleamed off the blades, off the blunt ends of warhammers and maces and long miner’s staffs, and danced across their faces. A beam shone into Dáin’s eye, fierce and for a moment brighter than the sun. She moved her head and the light died down, but violet spots remained dancing through her visions.

“What shall we do with them,” Zehyesh asked finally, her eye flickering like candlelight.

“Return them, of course. Return them and be done with it.”

Dáin did not wince at that, although one could be forgiven for thinking that her dark face twisted slightly. Dwalin raised an eyebrow, slowly. Very slowly.

“We can return most of them. The slingshot, that’s Ori’s; the mattock is Bofur’s and the boar spear is Bifur’s; the bolas is Dori’s,” Dwalin sorted through the weapons. He spoke with the surety of an old weaponsmaster, which he was, the surety of someone who had memorized the abilities and the flaws and the weapons and the liabilities in every dwarf he travelled with. He leaned back, frowning. “They didn’t return Bombur’s ladle.”

“Or his meat cleaver,” Gloin added. 

“Mahal wept,” Dáin muttered.

“A ladle,” Zehyesh said, flatly.

“It was surprisingly effective,” Dwalin said. He smiled faintly, as if his teak face had long forgotten how.  
Every time Dáin managed to forget about the sheer bloody gall of Thorin Oakenshield, it slammed into her with a bitter vengeance, would haves and could haves and should haves murmuring in the hot spaces behind her ears. This was no exception—a ladle! Armed with a ladle. While she had met Bombur and knew him to be an adept fighter—she had warriors. Soldiers. She did. 

“We can return them to their owners,” Balin said, his voice crisp, as if he had not been drowning in his own blood minutes before. “Brother, would you—“

“I’ve got most of them,” Dwalin said. His hand lingered over a long blade with a point like an arrowhead, but then he looked up and met Balin’s eyes. A slight shudder passed through the big dwarf, and he closed his eyes gently and breathed. Then he turned: “Gloin, give me a hand.”

They left, their arms weighed down with weapons. The Stonecouncil caught Dáin’s eye and dispersed, their voices a dull murmur as they departed. Dáin sighed, and rubbed the joint in her leg where the flesh and metal met. Yes, she thought, return them to their owners, their dead owners. She bit her lip—he would not want her company, but. 

~~~~~ 

Balin was in the tombs. 

They were long and dark and low, and unlike the other parts of Erebor they were nothing but the natural rock formations. Dark obsidian cut through the walls, glittering like drops of water in the dark stone. The sarcophaguses were carved from the same stone, with green glints catching in the torchlight; long rows of them, for all dwarves were returned to the stone when they died, their bones melding into the Mountain. The Tomb of the Kings lay directly beneath the Hall of the Kings; where their statues lined the walls above, their bones supported the walls below. 

Balin did not stand in front of Thorin Oakenshield’s tomb; he stood several feet to its right, in front of a slightly lower coffin. His white head was bowed, and every line of his back pressed down, down into the cool earth.

“I know you’re there,” he said, his voice hollow.

Dáin stepped forward, her iron leg dragging harshly against the ground. Something, something to say, but words caught before her lips, their long nails scratching down her throat. “You did not return, cousin,” she said finally, her voice quiet. Yet it echoed around the hall, cousin cousin cousin. 

He laughed softly, angrily, bitterly, he laughed like the dwarf at Azanulbizar who clawed his eyes out so he would not see them burn his mother’s father’s sister’s brother’s body; he laughed and his voice trembled: “I had to return them.”

Beyond him, at the foot of the tombs, a long row of knives were laid out, their blades all pointing carefully towards the living. A set of double swords, another longer sword, a bow with no arrows—Dáin shut her eyes briefly.

“We cannot bury them with their weapons,” she said. “We cannot open the tombs now, not when they have been returned.”

“From the stone we are carved, and to the stone we will return,” Balin said wearily, “I know. I just—“

He broke off and turned away, his face half in shadow. Torchlight flickered over his snowbright beard. He took a breath; slow and steady, like the heartbeat in the depths of the Mountain.

“You just,” Dáin said. 

He glared at her for a split second, his face raw and fierce. The old warrior. He did not answer the question, but turned to the fully face the tomb. He reached out a hand, a hand which trembled, and laid it gently on the rock.

Dáin waited quietly, her feet rooted in the earth. Waiting, she had always been good at waiting: waiting to be allowed to walk again; waiting for her father to return and tell her that she was late for training again, the lazy girl; waiting for her cousin’s ravens, each wing bringing darker and darker news until it was time to march to war; and now, waiting for her son and her husband, waiting for them to come from the Iron Hills to join her. Waiting for the coronation, where she would be crowned King Under the Mountain, and the throne would past from the eldest to the younger line of Durin. 

And, now, waiting for her cousin to speak, or to punch her in the face.

He chose to speak, his voice so soft Dáin had to lean forward slightly to here him speak.

“I taught him.”

“I taught him, and—“ he broke off, and his fingers clutched the tomb, his knuckles white. 

He looked at her, his eyes deep and grey with helpless rage.

“He would have been a good king,” he said.

The air was still, the shadows dark. Dáin could not say anything, her throat twisting into knots. 

Balin looked down at the long line of knives, throwing axes, swords; each one carefully crafted, the blades polished until they gleamed like mirrors. The light from the torchlight hit them, and for a moment Dáin saw sunlight and gold, and felt rather than heard a lion’s roar. 

“So many,” Balin said distantly. Dáin was not sure if he even remembered she was still there. “I told him it was foolish to carry so many daggers, that he was more likely to do damage to himself than any enemy. He laughed at me, that boy laughed at me, and told me he needed them. To protect, he said, so he could protect his people.”

“You don’t know—“

“They took them,” Balin said. “They stripped of his weapons, and he died.” They all died, went unspoken. They all died.

Dáin reached out, and gently, like she was cupping her son’s head, laid a hand on his shoulder.

“It was a great battle,” she said. They would have died anyways, went unspoken. They would have died anyways, because Thorin Oakenshield, the King Under the Mountain, was defending his home, and the fires of the Maker’s forge burned flaming bright within him, and death was written in his swordhand, and his nephews would always follow him. To the grave, in the end.

“I know,” Balin said. You cannot know that, went unspoken.

He turned to her. His eyes were bright like the blades, like the sun, bright and burning. She leaned in. Their foreheads brushed, quietly, a whisper of skin on skin. She breathed in his grief. He pressed a hand to her cheek.

“We—we can—“ Dáin paused. For what could they do, what could be done now, except remember. 

Balin leaned back, and shook his head. He plucked up two knives, the length of a hand but with blades no wider than two fingers. He looked at her.

“Thorin gave these to Fíli on his fiftieth birthday,” he said. “Before that, his father gave them to him. I remember the ceremony. They were the first blades created in the forges when Thrór returned to the Mountain.

“Give them to your son.”

Dáin took the daggers gently from his hands, her fingers trembling almost imperceptibly. They were beautiful, with iron folded in streams down the blades and twists of golden wire in the grip. They were not embellished, or decorated, and jeweled in a way that would make Men gasp and stare; they were more than that. 

She looked at her cousin. “I will,” she said. “And he will give them to his eldest child, and so it will go.”

Balin nodded, once, sharply, and turned to the tombs once more. Dáin looked down at the knives in her hand once more, and then up, at the dark walls.

“I will,” she promised, to her cousin’s back and to the tombs of the dead and to the Mountain, “The Line of Durin will protect its people.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so so so sorry for the wait; every time I tried to write this I got blindsided by Dain Ironfoot feels. (33! THIRTY THREE! AT THE BATTLE OF AZANULBIZUR! SWEEET MAHAL SAVE US FROM HER MAJESTY!)
> 
> Also she is female, because yes. Just yes.


	3. The Shield

The silence was something Bilbo could not get used to. 

It was just one more way that things had changed—Bilbo scowled, and kicked a small stone from the path. He watched it fall down against the dead, mud-brown leaves, thumping softly against the curve of the earth. 

Once, a dwarf would have picked it up with callused fingers, and brushed the caked dirt gently off the curve of the stone, and told him about the veins running through the cracks and how you could trace the life of this rock deep into the mountain side. But now, the stone was dead, and the air was still. 

“My dear fellow,” Gandalf said. Gandalf stopped, and turned around, gazing down at Bilbo with sympathy etched into every line on his weathered face. “My dear fellow,” he said again. 

Bilbo blinked. “Yes, I am quite all right,” he said loudly. His voice echoed throughout the trees. 

“Quite all right,” he continued, and nodded to himself quite firmly. He tucked his hands into his pockets—his fingers curled around the small gold ring he found, that one little treasure he kept with him—and walked decisively forward, past Gandalf, who stood, tall and thin, a shadow in the fading sun.

“Where are we anyways, Gandalf?” Bilbo asked. They had left Beorn’s house several days ago, after Bilbo had eaten his weight in honey and spent a lot of time staring at the giant bees and remembering—well, it didn’t matter what he was remembering, he had quite enough to deal with, thank you very much, not least that he was getting rather hungry. 

Gandalf eyed him slowly, and leaned against his old staff. 

“We are in the foothills of the Misty Mountains,” he said, staring up and west. Bilbo craned his head upwards: the mountains rose up and up above his head, cutting sharply into the pale sky.

Bilbo nodded, his throat tight. The sun was falling slowly behind the peaks, and ripples of orange flames spread across the sky, orange and yellow and red and deep blue in the corners, and the snow on the mountaintops blazed in the dying light. 

They blazed gold, and—

_gold blazed in his ice-blue eyes, gold blazed hot and sticky against his bare feet as he walked across the stone of Erebor, gold blazed in the armor the dwarf shrugged on, gold caught in his skin and his braids and his lips and Bilbo tried not to flinch, hands dripping in gold wrapped around his neck and lifted him up_

_men who reached towards the sky held gold on their tongues and wondered what it tasted like, Bilbo lifted a star in his hands and saw his own golden eyes reflected back at him, but they turned blood red and dripped down his face, the face of a corpse, and the forgiveness in his teeth tasted like bones—_

“Bilbo! Bilbo, are you quite sure you are all right?”

Bilbo stared. “Gandalf!” he started, and looked up at him. “Wher—What were you saying?”

“Bilbo,” Gandalf said gently, infinitely gently. “We could always winter at Beorn’s—“

“I’m afraid I must have dozed off for a moment there,” Bilbo said crossly, “It does seem to be getting quite late, wouldn’t you say, Gandalf?”

Gandalf’s face aged quite suddenly, grief dripping from his eyes, and he touched the back of Bilbo’s head, as if he was cradling a newborn child in his ancient fingertips. 

“What do you say to a fire, my lad?” he asked. “Keep away the wolves? And we could toast some of the waybread Beorn gave us?”

Bilbo pursed his lips. A fire—fires were risky, and could bring down all manner of unpleasant beings on them, but. The air was frigid, and the temperature was dropping, and Bilbo could see his own breath freezing into little diamonds in the air before him, and he tried to remember what it felt like to be truly warm. 

“A fire,” he agreed. “Shall I—I’ll collect some wood, I think.”

~~~~~

Bilbo bobbed in and out of the trees—they cast long shadows against the cold earth, and Bilbo thought briefly of tall elves drenched in blood and armor, and shook himself. Not that, not that. He plucked another dead branch off the ground, and the wood he was carrying shifted and slipped in his arms.

“Oh—no,” he said. Several pieces of word, meant for the kindling, slipped out of his arms and down his waistcoat, and landed with a soft thump on the ground. “Oh, bother.”

He sat down quite abruptly on the ground. Bother. 

The wood hung loosely in his arms, and he sighed and pressed his forehead against the cracks in the bark. He would probably get splinters, and for a second he could here his mother’s voice, crisp and warm, and the droll turn of her eyebrows. 

He sighed, and rubbed his eyes. The sun had almost completely set now, and the sky was pale purple. Stars were beginning to flicker into the existence, trembling in the cupped hands of the heavens. He remembered—

A branch. He cocked his head and stared at the wood he had just picked up, the wood that lay cradled in his arms. It looked like a normal dead branch, old and worn, blackened a little on the edges from some sort of fire, but with—

With iron casing gripping one end of it. He gripped the branch, the rest of the wood tumbling from his arms. One side was worn smooth, as if, as if it had curved along the muscles of an arm, and the other side—was covered in scratches, scores where chunks of wood had been dug out by something.

A mace, Bilbo thought, a mace. 

His hands were trembling. 

He traced the iron edges of the shield. The metal was cold, and rust had crept up along its smooth face like dried blood. Bilbo remembered that it had gleamed, silver shining against the smooth wood; Bilbo remembered Thor—his hands, warm and scarred, gently polishing the shield each night, before the warm fire. 

By the time Bilbo made it back to the campsite Gandalf had chosen, night had completely fallen and a fire was already crackling, eating away at thin logs. Gandalf looked up. 

“I wondered where you had got off to, my lad,” he said absently, puffing on his pipe, “I made you some toast.” 

“I—yes,” Bilbo said, taking the several pieces of golden-brown toast, which had been thickly smeared with honey. The first time he had tried it, back when he was still travelling East, it had tasted like sunlight. Now, it sat thick and leaden in his throat.

Gandalf’s eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward. “My dear fellow,” he said, “What on earth has happened?”

“It’s nothing,” Bilbo said. “It’s—ah, well. I found this.” 

“A log?” Gandalf asked, but he was already reaching for the shield with a frown on his face. Bilbo’s hands closed involuntarily around the shield, and he clutched it to his chest. 

“No,” he said, and heard his voice tremble slightly. “It’s—I think it’s a shield. The shield, you know.”

Gandalf leaned back. His eyes, beneath fierce brows, brightened—with awareness and something that may have been grief.

“Gandalf?” Bilbo asked. “Where exactly are we?”

Gandalf blew smoke out of his mouth and nose: it coalesced into the form of a raised axe, grey and weightless. “We are nearing the pass over the Misty Mountains,” he said slowly, and hummed lowly against his pipe.

“He dropped it,” Bilbo blurted out. “I mean, it fell, that time in the trees—with the eagles, when we first saw—you know. It was left behind.”

Bilbo’s hands curled over the shield. The oak was strong, and seemed to hum slightly under his fingers. Gandalf did not say anything. 

Bilbo had thought it was silent. He was wrong. The fire crackled—not merrily or angrily, it just crackled, glowing red in the night. Sparks jumped lazily into the air, dissolving next to pale stars in the black sky. Wind rustled the few leaves remaining on the trees. Bilbo breathed, and could hear his breath turn to ice.

This wasn’t where they had fought, that night. There was no cliff, no fallen trees, no ash or soot singeing the ground. How had the shield come there? Had it fallen off the cliff, and somehow rolled to his arms? Had a bird carried it away? Had a warg lifted it up in its yellow teeth and gnawed on it as it ran, using the old shield in the place of a thick bone?

“He was—he changed,” Bilbo said. His voice was quiet, but it rose with the sparks up into the sky. Gandalf’s eyes traced its journey upward. 

“He was a good king, before. Without the crown,” Bilbo said. His face twisted, and he stared at the fire. 

“Before,” he spat. His throat throbbed, and he remembered the sheen of gold. He glared down at the shield. “He died, Gandalf. He died.”

Bilbo’s hands gripped the shield tightly, and before he knew quite what he was doing, he had lurched to his feet and dumped the old shield into the flames. Gandalf’s eyes widened, and he inhaled a mouthful of smoke. 

“Bilbo—“ he said.

The fire soared, flames surging around the old wood. The shield smoked, the smell of burning wood and heating iron and dried blood and rotting wounds and burnt flesh permeated the frozen air, cutting jaggedly through Bilbo’s nose. He thought he could hear—screaming, the screams of a battlefield but then the screams of a town bathed in fire roaring in his ears, the noise of a hurricane. A dragon spread its wings and its sibilant voice echoed in Bilbo’s ears. The iron glittering in the edges of the shield shone bright red-gold with heat and danger. The wood split in two. Bilbo flinched, his body stiffly jerking backwards, rage and fear pounding in his chest.

“No,” Bilbo snapped. 

He threw himself down onto the sleeping pad that Gandalf had rolled out for him. He turned his back on the fire, on Gandalf, on the broken shield that smoldered and cracked in the heat. He thought he could hear a song rising from the fire, deep and heavy as the mountains. He squeezed his eyes shut. His fingers curled around the golden ring in his pocket. 

~~~~~

_Battle claws in your ears, the screams of the dying and the vicious crash of metal—and for a moment you could be home again in the great forges where the clang of iron was the steady heartbeat of the mountain and the clatter of pots and pans in your mother’s kitchen—and then the screams start up again and oh mahal is that you making that noise—_

_Your grandfather’s head rolls down the valley and you imagine that it lands at your feet his eyes wide and staring and his beard hacked off. But it keeps falling away, lost underfoot and maybe it will land in a foxhole somewhere, the game of golf invented for the first time, but then an orc trips on it and falls under a great axe and for a single lucid second you think—so this is how it ends_

_Your arms are tired you have never held a sword this long and your hands are damp with sweat and blood but your world has narrowed to just this orc with his cruel scars. Everything else falls away and you can’t think can’t breathe but the blood in your veins is wailing for vengeance and you move as sure as death._

_You will not fail, and you don’t, not today, and you feel like a great warrior of old, and you think maybe this day will ring with victory, and you lead the charge with fire in your veins and murder in your heart—_

_You find your brother—your brother your mother your lover_

_You find him with half his face is caved in, and his blood is a brighter red than any you have ever seen, and it sinks around his head like a crown, and he does not move mahal have mercy please wake up—_

_And your hands claw at the edges of his armor—it is too large for him. He rattles in his armor he is just a child and he falls back down to the earth and your thumb slips into the cavity of his cheek and you want to scream_

_The world falls on your shoulders and his blood is on your hands and it burns like fire fire and blood and screaming and all you can see is death it chokes halfway up your throat wake up wake up_

~~~~~

“Wake up, Bilbo my lad,” Gandalf’s voice sounded far away. “It is time to head off again.”

Bilbo’s eyes flickered open, and he shoved himself into a sitting position. His joints cracked and popped as he moved, and his back ached. The wind ruffled his air, a soft hand tumbling through his curls. 

He peered at the sky. It was grey, and the clouds hung low. “It looks like snow, I think,” he said, his voice bleary and thick with sleep. 

Gandalf hummed in agreement. “We should leave soon, to make the pass,” he said. “The sooner the better. We can eat on the road.” 

Bilbo nodded. “I just—let me just pack quickly.”

He rolled up his sleeping pad, his blankets, and bound them down tightly with thin rope. He slung his pack over his pack and checked Sting at his side; he felt in his pocket for his old ring and relief eased over him when his fingers connected with the soft gold; he plucked up his walking stick and his handkerchief and scanned the campsite for anything he might have forgotten.

His eyes landed on the firepit, and he looked away quickly. His dream—he could not quite remember it, but it clung to him like a second skin. War, he thought, but not—his? His hand tightened in his pocket. 

“Bilbo?” Gandalf called.

He thought about kisses the color of blood on the snow, the blood of the Fell Winter and the blood of the Battle of Five Armies; he thought about the screams of dying orcs and men and elves and dwarves tangling together in the air; he thought about a great brown bear dragging a broken body off a battlefield; and he thought about one he could call king and the sight of the Lonely Mountain from the top of the Carrock, its snow pale pink and the laughter of children really just children and the way his feet had tumbled after a song about home and belonging and memory and longing and—

“Ah—one moment,” Bilbo said, and felt the same rush in his veins that he did the same day he ran out of his home in Bag End. He scrambled over to the firepit, and raked over the dusty coals. He nudged one aside with his foot, they were quite cool now, the fire dead, and—

There! He bent down swiftly, and plucked up the iron pieces. The wood had mostly turned to ash, but a little bit of the oak still remained, charred black by the hungry fire. The iron was still warm to the touch, and Bilbo imagined for a moment that it wasn’t metal but a solid, living hand, Thorin’s hand, warm in his, with a heartbeat thudding steadily under the thumb. His fingers closed, tight, around the metal. 

“He was a good king,” he muttered. “He was.” 

“Bilbo?” Gandalf’s voice was edging with impatience, and Bilbo remembered oh how often he had sounded like that, frustrated and irritated and crotchety and save me from the stubbornness of dwarves. 

“Coming,” Bilbo responded. His vision blurred for a moment, his eyelashes damp—and snow began to fall into his curls. “Coming,” he said again.

He clutched at the iron in his hand. 

“I think,” Bilbo said, “that I am quite ready to return home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading! (and my sincere apologies for being so. slow. holy shit.)
> 
> Also. Poor Bilbo. 
> 
> (I'm sorry?? I'm really convinced that Bilbo would have so many conflicting memories of Thorin, especially immediately post quest, so it's maybe less shippy than it would otherwise be.)
> 
> And if anyone feels a sudden urge to find me on tumblr, you can find me at fuzzyonthesubjectofkneecaps.tumblr.com and we can scream together about dwarves and hobbits and dwarves it's great.

**Author's Note:**

> This was vaguely inspired by a tumblr post a long time ago about Bilbo finding Thorin's oaken shield, and I can't remember what he did with it but I'm sure it was really sad. And then this spiralled out of control. (If any of you know what I'm talking about, congratulations and also maybe let me know who they are so I can credit them properly.)
> 
> Title from "Overjoyed" by Bastille.


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